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[DVDVRMC] JULY 2017 - RED, WHITE OR BLUE


RIPPA

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Our first theme in this new version of the Movie Club is - RED, WHITE OR BLUE

Us Xenophobic Americans will honor this country by loving it or getting out. Or whatever the fuck it is the kids say these days.

Watch something that has either Red, White or Blue in the title please

Of course... I probably should have figured out what I was going to watch BEFORE picking the theme...

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Like I need any excuses to watch BLUE VELVET for the 546th time (and yes, it just keeps getting better, every single time!)

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I was always sort of meaning to watch Blue Is The Warmest Color, so here's a good excuse.  And I assume something like, let's say, The IncREDibles would not count for Red.

If anyone wants to do a three-fer, Red White & Blue is one of my very favorite movies.

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I will again point out - that in theory - you should watch something you never have seen before.

But y'all are fucking lazy and I want discussion

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/3/2017 at 5:54 PM, CSC said:

I HAVE been meaning to watch White Chicks for the last 13 years...

I used to get in free to the smaller cinema here that's no longer open, and we used to would do employee screenings with our friends that worked there around midnight. White Chicks was one of those "eh, it's free, with friends, and maybe some booze" kind of films.  The infamous Terry Crews scene in that movie is still insanely funny to me, so I'll never completely hate the film because of it.

I will probably watch and write about something this weekend. Things that I haven't seen that I have fairly accessible to me off the top of my head:

Blue Ruin
The Red Shoes
Thin Red Line
Blue is the Warmest Color.

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

 

SOLDIER BLUE (NELSON, 1970)

The hopefulness of the 60s counterculture (at least the white counterculture) sure gave way to cynicism in the 1970s. Though perhaps that cynicism was called for. SOLDIER BLUE, based on the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, was released less than a year after the My Lai massacre become public knowledge. As a revisionist Western, it not only offers a strong criticism of imperialism and colonialism, but also suggests that the American project--born out of two genocides--is perhaps irredeemable.

SOLDIER BLUE is obviously indebted to Arthur Penn's BONNIE & CLYDE, certainly in its aesthetics and in the way that it merges humour with ultraviolence. The film even begins with a warning that the last part of the film (the massacre proper) is going to be violent and hard to watch. (I watched the edited version, which is supposedly far less graphic, and the final massacre is pretty brutal.) Of course, THE WILD BUNCH and McCABE & MRS MILLER are also touch points. Nelson isn't Penn, though, and the merging of humour and violence doesn't always work quite as well.

The film is far better than I expected, though. Candace Bergen, who I basically know from Murphy Brown, is young, sexy, and feisty as fuck (with a voice three octaves higher--she must be a smoker). There's also a bit part for Donald Pleasance as Isaac Q. Cumber--as you'd expect, Pleasance is awesome (and I almost didn't recognize him at first).

Peter Strauss, who I've never heard of, plays the titular character, real name Honus Gant. He's not a great actor, by any means, but he does enough not to take you too far out of the movie. In fact, he plays naivety and earnestness well-enough that you can get behind his utter horror in the final scenes of the film.

The last you see of Gant, he's being dragged behind a US wagon, to where he'll probably be hanged as a traitor or a coward, having refuse to partake in the massacre. It speaks to the success of the film that you can see this one man's refusal, however ultimately impotent, as a real triumph.

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 10 months later...
  • RIPPA unpinned this topic

I tried to find a trio of martial arts films to watch and was amazed by the dearth of asswhipping epics with Blue in the title.

I finally have an excuse to watch Red Sun Rising all the way through instead of just skipping straight to the Don "The Dragon" Wilson vs. James Lew balls to the walls Pier 6 brawl.

I have seen Clan of the White Lotus and The Bride With White Hair too many times to count.  I have no desire to suffer through the shitty Bride With White Hair sequel nor the shitty 2014 adaptation, The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom.

I may have to abandon the Blue part of the martial arts project and take the easy way out.

Any excuse to watch Blue Thunder is a good one.

 

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31 minutes ago, Control said:

I really killed it a year ago while y’all twiddled your thumbs.

Yeah - I love that I nuked the folder and NOW everyone suddenly is talking about it

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